Sony Ericsson Q2 losses: 'it was the earthquake wot did it'

Poor old Sony Ericsson. Just cos it's not had the year Nokia or RIM have had, nobody's noticing that it's actually in a fair bit of trouble itself and could do with a bit of an arm around the shoulder.

That said, we're not sure how much good that sort of thing does when you've just lost €50 million odd in three months, even though you're insisting it actually wasn't your fault at all.

Sony Ericsson's quarterly results don't make for too good reading, despite the company generally coming across as doing okay since ditching Symbian and migrating over to Android. Its last two quarters have yielded profits of €12 million and €11 million respectively, after all.

Yesterday, however, Sony Ericsson reported a net loss of €50 million, despite having about 95 Xperia phones knocking about, including that PlayStation number and probably a few more we've never even heard of.

Altogether they combined to contribute 7.6 million units sold, down a whopping 31% from the same quarter last year, and down on expected shipments of between 8 and 11 million.

So why the sudden turnaround? Well, Sony Ericsson is pointing a finger at the old 'Hand of God' routine, with CEO Bert Norberg saying in a statement:

“Sony Ericsson’s second quarter profitability was affected by the March 11 earthquake in Japan. We estimate that the impact of earthquake-related supply chain constraints on our portfolio was close to 1.5 million units, with most of the effect in the early part of the quarter.

“Our shift to Android-based smartphones continues with smartphone sales accounting for more than 70 percent of our total sales during the quarter,” Norberg added.

He went on to big up the Xperia clan, insist demand was strong and promise that things would return to growth over the rest of the year. Which is exactly what anyone would say in his position, of course. We'll just wait and see for ourselves, Bert.